Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism, this blog contains random musings of a journalist, father, husband, son, friend, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and occasionally-ranting rabbi, taken from Shabbat-O-Grams, columns, speeches, letters, sermons and thin air. "On One Foot," the column, appears regularly in the New York Jewish Week, as well as a blog for the "Times of Israel."

Friday, May 22, 2015

Airbrushing Ruth

There
are lots of heroes in Jewish traditional sources and most of them are
men. But have you ever noticed that our holidays do a good job of
maximizing the acclaim given women? Purim would not be Purim without
Esther. Hanukkah has Judith and Passover has Miriam. And even long
before Betty Friedan changed history intoher-story, Shavuot had
Ruth. Without Ruth's classic kindness, there would never have been King
David - literally, as he was her great grandson. How sad it would have been for
all of us if Ruth's voice had been stilled.

Jewish
tradition has no inherent problem with women. The problem isn't Judaism - it's
Jews. The problem is the slippery slope that comes from the incremental
discrimination against women, a discrimination that originated in patriarchal
and misogynistic societies and gained momentum over time - and especially
recently.

As
a committed pluralist, I need to accept that for some Jews - and some
iterations of Judaism - halachic justifications for the differentiation between
male and female sex roles are internally consistent with an accepted worldview
that existed in previous eras, long before feminism. They were right,
perhaps, for their time. Those practices, which minimized women's roles
in public religious life, also reflected a general reverence for ancient
practices.

But
I also know that discrimination against women, like all discrimination, is a
slippery slope, one that leads to objectification and has, in many cultures,
led to a culture that condones violence. So, while refusing to succumb to the
temptation to condemn past practices, we need to go out of our way to reverse
the disturbing trends. But in some parts of the Jewish world, the exact
opposite is happening.

...There
is no general prohibition against women singing in classic Jewish law based on
the Talmud and subsequent codes and commentaries until the early nineteenth
century. The current blanket prohibition accepted by Haredi and some modern
Orthodox rabbis was first suggested and rejected by Rabbi Joshua Falk (d. 1614)
and was only given as a halachic ruling by Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the Hatam
Sofer, in the early nineteenth century.... There is therefore no halachic
justification for anyone walking out when women sing. But even if one accepts
the very strict ruling of the Hatam Sofer, it is forbidden to walk out in order
not to insult the female performers.

So
we can see the slippery slope in action and how the notion of Kol Isha took on
a life of its own relatively recently. The 19th century is only yesterday
by Jewish historic standards.

Well,
this week, the slope got even slipperier. Now, not only are women no
longer to be heard in public Jewish life, evidently they also cannot be seen.
Not just covered up - but airbrushed out completely.

See
below a photo of Israel's new government, sworn in this week. The lack of
women in senior positions is just one of the many major concerns that one could
have about this government. But at least there are some women.

Or
are there? See this front page from a Haredi newspaper. The women have
been airbrushed out!

Israelis
are a creative lot, so that affront gave rise to some rather hilarious memes.

But
the humor masks a real problem. For if a society tolerates the silencing
of an entire segment of the population - and now the rendering of them as
invisible - where does that slippery slope lead? What outrageous
behaviors will happen next, and against whom, and how will they be
justified?

We
need to return Judaism to its roots, literally, to Root, which is the Hebrew
for Ruth. Ruth could easily have disappeared into the dustbin of Moabite
history. But she insisted on being heard, being seen and remaining aside
her mother in law Naomi, to whom she said, famously "Whither thou goest, I
will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people,
and thy God my God."

Soon,
if this slippery slope is not reversed, who knows, maybe someone will try to
airbrush Ruth right out of the Bible.